I find the dumping on Mulcair weird.
He had great environmental bona fides, having been Environment Minister in Liberal Quebec government and resigning rather that do something he thought was bad for the environment.
As NDP leader, his campaign centred on Universal Pharmacare and Dentalcare.
Good solid NDP values stuff.
He had high approval numbers going into the election.
A combination of Trudeau gaining momentum, in part from a really smart commercial (go back and look at the escalator ad, as i call it), as well as his Pot and Electoral Reform promises, left the NDP down a bit, and the ABC (Anything but Conservative) vote coalescing around Justin.,
The idea that Mulcair was exceptionally centrist, or betrayed leftists is utter nonsense to me.
He promised, if elected to take the country markedly to the left and improve social fairness........ his platform had the added value of being costed and credible.
The media certainly put their thumbs on the scale a bit once Trudeau picked up steam.
At the same time, the fair knock on Mulcair is that he was a policy wonk, and a solid speaker in both languages, but that he didn't give people the warm fuzzies.
He wasn't quite a leftist version of Harper, but did give on off a certain technocratic vibe.
Where Justin.....well, lets be honest, many women were particularly taken by him; he was all smiles, and relatively accessible as compared with the then rather dour Mr. Harper as PM, and the attitudinal shift is one that some very much wanted.
Mulcair wasn't an idealist, he was a pragmatist with a bent for social fairness and progress.
I think he's one of the better PMs we never had.
